I write a lot on here about my levels of stress, of anxiety, of exhaustion, and how difficult it is for me to deal with them in a healthy manner. I often say that I’m bad at resting or I’m not sure how to rest and recover when it comes to mental and emotional drain. One of the things I typically leave out (ultimately, anyway, since I’m pretty sure half-explanations of what is going to be the topic of this blog post are my most-deleted writing on this blog) is that I know of ways for me to get rest. I know of things that soothe me when I can’t seem to unwind or relax. The main problem is that they’re difficult for me to access in ways that keep them soothing or in sufficient quantities that I can actually recover enough that my progress doesn’t vanish the instant something stressful happens. I’ve written before about my need to escape civilization, to get far away from cities and noise and the humdrum of my daily life (I call it “Tree Time” in my head, since I associate this with being in heavily forested areas). What I havent written about is that probably the most restful or soothing thing I can do is connect with other people.

It’s a difficult thing for me to talk or write about, the desire to be around people. I’m pretty clearly an introvert and often feel drained when I’m around people for long periods of time (less time is required the more people there are), but all of that changes when it comes to one-on-one interactions. I find those invigorating. I love nothing more than watching a show with someone and then discussing it with them. Or playing a 2-player game with someone. Or just reading books together and occasionally talking about said books. I like being around people, talking to them about stuff we’re both interested in, and connecting deeplying on an emotional level. I also really like coming into comfortable, platonic physical contact with poeple.

The romantic stuff is nice too, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not really restful in the same way. It can be incredibly soothing, which is half the equation, but not really restorative. That said, it can be difficult to get this level of connection and sometimes contact outside of a relationship because of being raised according to the strictures of my paren’ts very Catholic brand of toxic masculinity, which means I was heavily conditioned to associate that sort of closeness and physical contact exclusively with relationships and romance (and see it as wrong to do or desire in any context other than as step one in the process of procreation, but that’s an entire blog post all on its own). To the degree that it fucked me up for a while about how I felt about some of my closest friends, since I’d spent my entire life learning that wanting that from someone meant I wanted to be in romantic relationship with someone. It took me most of my twenties to fight that conditioning enough to be able to break the association between that level of interpersonal connection and romatic relationships, but it has been worth the effort.

That said, it’s not like I’ve had much of a chance to put that into pratice. A lot of my ability to be physically comfortable around other people was set back a great deal by the pandemic and the learned urge to avoid proximity to others. Even now, as most of the world avoids masks and I can see the next wave of viruses looming on the horizon (the latest variants are pretty scary even if they’re being downplayed or entirely unaddressed in the media), it is difficult to allow myself to be near other people who are practicing the same levels of precautions that I am, much less those who have done away entirely with mask-wearing. I’ve done my best to get contact through video game playing, TTRPG sessions, and various online communities, but there’s no way to make up for the lack of physical proximity and contact that I used to get when I’d spend time with my friends prior to the pandemic. Even a video call can’t do more than make me remember how much I miss being around people.

I grew up without this level of contact (which maybe explains why it’s something I find so comforting and soothing) but wound up becoming a lot of people’s favorite person to hug and literally hang off during college. I was large, friendly, and actively trying to not seem like a threat, not to mention I’d have rather died than make someone uncomfortable, which sent a lot of people a very clear message that I’d respect anyone’s boundaries. I had a standing rule with all my friends that, as long as they warned me, they could just run up and hug me or leap on my back any time they wanted since my main boundary was not being surprised rather than not being touched and I spent four years hanging out in public spaces for hugs, carrying people around campus, and in general just learning how nice it was to be around people who weren’t touching me only to hurt me or trying to raise me to be a “Man in Christ” by teaching me that I shouldn’t need anything from anyone ever and that I should never touch anyone in any way but a handshake with the exception of whatever woman I eventually married (and then only in very specific circumstances usually around trying to have kids). It was a lonely, horrible existence prior to college and a wonderful eye-opening experience during it. One that, as I said, took me a long time to be able to emotionally regulate in a healthy way, but one that was instrumental in helping me figure out what I wanted out of all kinds of relationships.

Now, I’m struggling again. Not because its something I can’t get and am told I shouldn’t want and not because I’m not sure how to handle or even sort the emotions it brings out in me, but because I can’t get enough to counteract all the deprivation I’ve felt over the past few years. It’s one of those things that I’m almost afraid to ask for, a desire I’m afraid to give in to, because I’m worried that it’s just going to make the general lack feel worse. I mean, I had a great time being around all my new friends (and the old ones!) during our trip to Spain and seeing them again during the wedding (not to mention getting to see someone in-person who I hadn’t seen since 2019) was amazing, but the weeks after it have been incredibly difficult because I went from getting that emotional and physical connection with people to not getting it anymore. Sure, I can (and do) still get to emotionally connect with people online (though my list is getting pretty short, as my support network has shifted, withered, and been hastily reinforced), but that’s just enough to keep me where I am rather than help me recover.

It is a difficult position to be in, to know what I could do to rest and being either uncomfortable asking for it, unable to get it, or otherwise afraid to rely on something that requires other people, even if it doesn’t require a specific person. I mean, it’s a lot like external validation, you know? Yeah, it’s nice and it can be a really good boost for you when you get it, but it’s not something you can rely on in the long-term without running the high risk of developing some unhealthy relationships. I think some amount of it can be healthy, but it’s not something you should rely on in a way that makes other people afraid to deny or withhold it. That’s a recipe for a toxic relationship right there (and mirrors several that I’ve had to carefully extract myself from), so I am leery of trying to rely on it myself for anything other than a brief, occasional moment when someone else freely offers it.

Other things used to be restful and restorative, so that I wasn’t entirely reliant on this. Things like video games, tabletop gaming, books, and even some TV shows. Plus going for walks, going to places where nature overpowered civilization, and a whole host of my hobbies. Most of those have been burned out by the stress of the last five years and the pandemic especially. I’m not sure how to recover from all that when the one last thing remaining to me could easily become incredibly unhealthy for me and the other people or persons involved. Which is why I’m trying to find new things or a way to restore old things to their previously restful state. Still, it is difficult to not feel like enough time around people I care about, and who care about me, wouldn’t help me just enough that I’d be able to fix myself and my lack of other forms of recovery and rest. I doubt it would, given how burned out and exhausted I feel, but that doesn’t make the feeling any easier to ignore. Nothing does, except the knowledge that there is rarely ever a silver-bullet solution to any of life’s problems and that I got into this burned-out mess by being overly reliant on my various forms of rest during the early days of the pandemic, when I wasn’t actually taking care of myself. It isn’t comforting, but this experience provides me with enough certainty to refrain from developing a potentially unhealthy dependency for the time being.